Author Archives: wabson

Magnetic Island

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Apperently this place is so called bacause Captain Cook’s compass messed up when he sailed past the island on his voyage of 1770. On a related note, there’s a town a little further down the coast from here called ‘1770’, named after that year. These random facts are brought to you by the Rough Guide and the Footprint Guide, my two bibles for this trip.

I didn’t post from my last stop at Mission Beach a little further north, mainly due to it being in the middle of nowhere and thus having no Internet. The town didn’t even have a bank, it was that remote. But it did have beautiful rainforest stretching right down to the sea, which was lined with 14 km of long sandy beaches and smaller bays, separated by outcrops of black basalt rock. There were cassowaries too, which I’d post a photo of if only I could install my camera drivers on one of these damned computers (this time the base unit is locked away in a cupboard so I can’t even get near it…).

I’m here for another day or so here then I’ve got a six hour coach journey down to Airlie Beach and the Whitsunday Islands (another place named by Cook, but no points for guessing why). I’m hoping to do some overnight camps for a change when I get there rather than hostels, which I’m beginning to get a little bored of!

Cairns

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Cairns is a small town up on the coast of Tropical Queensland. It’s a former mining town and now rather dependent on tourism for it’s income, which appears to be doing more for the town than the mining ever did!

The diving out on the reef here is good and there’s some moderately good scenery around Kuranda a short bus ride away up in the hills that we saw yesterday, but other than that I can’t see that Cairns has a lot to offer. So feeling slightly disappointed with the Mediterranean holiday resort-style nightlife and the half an hour trek into town from my modern but rather impersonal hostel (OK, so I could move further in but would I really want to?) I’m moving on to the lovely-sounding Mission Beach a couple of hours down the coast. The hostel and the Greyhound ticket are booked and I even have some ideas about what I’m going to do there.

Now to work out what else I’m going to see on the long trek back down to Sydney! I can’t be expected to plan more than a couple of days in advance, surely?

No more photos this time due to this PC being locked down so I can’t install Canon’s shitty 5MB of drivers that I need to get the pics of fthe camera 🙁

Sydney

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It had to be done really, didn’t it?

Me in front of Sydney Opera House

Tomorrow morning I fly up to Cairns and the hot and wet conditions in Northern Queensland – very different from Sydney at the moment, which continues to creep into Spring.

More blog (and email) updates to follow, I promise!

50p

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I glanced down at a fifty pence coin lying on the floor today and was struck by how remarkable an object it is. Quite unlike any Morrocan dirams, Slovenian tolars, Croatian kunas, Polish crowns or (heaven forbid) euros, it’s just quite British.

It’s good to be back.

Tomorrow I’m off up to Northampton where I shall be reunited with my computer and the USB lead for my camera which will allow me to download the gigabyte or so of photos that I managed to take whilst away (out of which I hope to be able to extract at least two good ones).

Five hours

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Been up since 7. Mostly packed, will do rest tomorrow. Leaving Waterloo at noon tomorrow for Paris, requiring me to leave Northampton at 8. Another early start, yay.

Planet Afterlife died today when the work computer finally got turned off. Sorry everyone – perhaps someone else can host it until my return in October?

Off to bed now for five hours sleep. I haven’t felt this tired for a long time.

Five days to go

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Apparently a lot of people round the office are slightly confused over how I’m still here. Their confusion may be justified, given that we had leaving drinks on Friday (Mmmm, £2 cocktails).

Very glad I went down to London this weekend, even if we didn’t make it to Big Gay Out until gone 5pm on the Saturday. Highlights included wandering around Westminster at three in the morning, double G&Ts and general good company.

The journey back to Leamington last night proved rather interesting however, when First Great Western held us outside the station for twenty minutes while we waited for some platform space to become free. This would have been fine, had it not been for the fact that the platform space was being taken up by our connecting train, which incidentally was the last northbound train from Oxford that evening. Thankfully they paid for taxis for us all to get to our destinations (the taxi driver was very nice, unlike the train company steward organising them, who I nearly ended up in an argument with), so at least I got home in the end, even if I did miss Big Brother.

Inter-railing starts on Sunday, woot!

Holiday photos

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Slowly things are returning to normal as I get used to being back at work again after Gran Canaria. Not that it matters that much though, given I only have two weeks left before inter-railing in August.

View of Puerto Rico beach from the apartment

I haven’t really blogged much at all about the holiday at all, largely because I’ve been unable to put the whole experience into words very well. In summary it was a great week in the sun with all the normal holiday antics you might expect, but it’s taken a while to get used to normal life again.

I took a few photos, albeit not as many as some people managed. I’ve finally managed to put the half decent ones I took up on the web today, but they’re only on my work PC for now for bandwidth reasons. I’ll post them on wabson.org when I get a chance, but don’t expect the full resolution versions on there.

Blogging from now until the end of the month is likely to be about as infrequent as it has over the last week – blame this on the fact that I don’t have net access at home at the moment and I’m gradually trying to ween myself off the Internet as access through August is likely to be somewhat sporadic at best.

Looking forward to: Big Gay Out next weekend

Back in the UK

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We landed at Luton at 3am this morning, having just flew over London on our way back from Gran Canaria. By the time we got through the normal post-flight rigmarole it was about 3.45 (I’m not sure if they were checking our passports more thouroughly, given the circumstances) and WHSmith had all the early editions of today’s papers.

Between us, we picked up a good cross-section and began reading all about yesterday’s horrors, the details of which hadn’t been too clear from the limited satellite coverage we’d been able to see before we left at the other end. Only then did the true extent of what had happened really start to sink in.

I got back to Northampton at about 6am in the end, too tired to read any more of the gory details, too tired to comprehend it all. I slept for a bit, I woke up again early this afternoon and started reading yesterday’s blogs. I’m glad that everyone I know down in London seems to be OK.

I’ll probably go through it some more tomorrow, but for now that’s all I need to know. There’s only so much you can get through when you’re sat in front of a computer with a tiny screen, no mouse and a 56k internet connection.

Incidentally, the holiday was good.

Conference season

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Today marks the first day of the summer vacation at Warwick and already there are plenty of conference delegates wandering around campus, dressed entirely inappropriately for the heat. I sat on the piazza alone while I ate my Viva lunch and read my Guardian, remebering what it felt like twelve months ago when I used to do the same on an almost daily basis, whilst being attacked by wasps.

Back then I was a mere graduand, with no plans and no degree certificate. Now I have both of those, albeit without a job after the 29th of July. I intend to use up what savings I have travelling during August and September and arrive in London after that to desperately start earning some more money before Christmas. Oh, and finding somewhere to live.

But for now, the most important thing I have to worry about (apart from the threat of Europoean innovation in software going down the pan, of course) is my tan lines, which seem to have got worse after the weather at Alton Towers on Friday was unexpectedly alright.

I’m looking forward to Gran Canaria lots, at least because it’ll give me a chance to get rid of them. Three days to go!